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Topic: New APS-C Camera in February? (Read 24114 times)

I can pay $600 for a Sony NEX-5 with APS-C sensor including a kit lens. (599.99 with rebate and free shipping -- B&H 11/08/11).

$600 is the usual price point for the G-series camera, roughly. For $600, do I want a 1/1.7 camera when I can get a slightly larger but still compact full aps-c camera for the same price? Tough sell.

To compete effectively, I think the G-series has got to be larger sensor, hopefully full APS-C, even if it is still not an interchangeable lens camera. I wouldn't be surprised to see the G-"Next" as non-interchangeable APS-C this spring, (hopefully with a nice reasonably fast 24-1nn IS lens) and the interchangeable lens non-mirror system at the end of the summer. Hopefully all APS-C.

Another poster in this thread speculated that Canon is stupid. ...I don't think Canon is stupid. The question is, does Canon think we are stupid? I don't think so. That Canon skipped producing a G13 with a 1/1.7 sensor suggests that Canon respects the intelligence of its customers.

Now another major camera company producing a small-sensor interchangeable lens non-mirror camera with a tiny sensor and expecting us to buy it because of cute ads with Ashton Kutchner.... not so much.

Good call... the next G with a larger sensor would be sweet (even if not all the way up to APS-C) would really re-position it in the market and make the larger size over the S95/100 more worthwhile.

18mp? Canon has really limited themselves with the 1DX. Can they get away with putting more mp in a crop body than they have in their flagship? Sony has a cropped 24mp camera, so they can't compete with it without making the 1DX look as though it's lacking something. If they aren't going to go over 18mp, then what does that mean for the 7D and 60D that are already at 18mp? They would have to have some additions that I can't even imagine to justify upgrading when the mp count stays the same.

While the 1DX if the flagship for now, we still dont know the full roadmap of Canon DSLR to come. I could see the 1DX being the king of darkness and Canon having a 5D III with a high MP count (28-30MP for example) which would alow them to also have more MP if they wanted to on a crop body. Maybe they will even have two types of sensors for crop body, a high MP for resolution and a low MP for low light.

It is hard to conclude at this time without the full product roadmap. The next 3-4 months will be very interesting. Remember Canon cannot ignore competitive product from Nikon either. So 1DX alone does not tell the whole future story of Canon DSLR - my two cents.

over the T2i, the T3i had wireless flash triggering, articulated LCD screen, creative filters, manual audio control and digital zoom while filming.

other than Digic V what's going to be the draw for consumers to pick the T4i over the T3i? Built-in GPS? D7000-style AF during video? Touchscreen?

Agreed. I think the wireless flash triggering available in the newer XXD/XXXD line is sometimes completely over looked IMO. Its such a huge benefit to use the body as a master when you have a limited number of flashes.

I dont really need video so I am holding on to my 450D a little longer until a new 5D or maybe a rumored 6D comes out but I really hope they make that standard in all lines.

7D2 will almost definitely hve a new sensor, what it is i don't know. Either 18MP with a lot higher IQ than currently (larger pixels a la 1dx), or the same IQ-per-pixel as the current 7D with more of them (keeping pixel-size the same and fitting more in the same space). If it's 24mp or more current-7D-owners might upgrade, but either option would be a nice upgrade for 60D/xxxD-owners. Keep the rest of the features the same, there's nothing wrong with it.

If you're using "pixel" to mean "photosite" then that should be possible by now. To differentiate the two terms, pixel usually means the entire area on the sensor occupied for each pixel of resolution so that can not be made larger when keeping the same 18MP resolution. The photosite which is a portion, usually less than 50%, of the area occupied for each pixel can certainly be made larger if tech as advanced and the electronics that sit beside each photosite can now be made smaller.

Last February it was the T3i announced from "Lake Success, N.Y.". What are the odds we'll see a repeat of that announcement? Or is this rumor simply predicated on past Canon announcements?

The T3i model is unique to Canon North America which is headquartered in New York. All announcements for US unique model numbers will come out of the USA or Canada. At the same time, a 550D would have been announced in Europe, but would never be announced by Canon USA.

Worldwide models like 5D MK II may be announced anywhere in the world.

There are no sources to support any assertion about a 7D2 because a 7D2 doesn't exist.

In general, all other things being equal, larger photosites are advantageous as they will have a larger SNR and larger DR (technical measure of DR... full-well/noise floor... I don't want to start the usual debate again). Canon would appear to have admitted this now with the 1DX and Nikon certainly has been on that boat for years.

Improved DR and lower noise is almost a given for all next gen sensors a la the Sony sensors and the claims for the 1DX sensor would indicate Canon has made tech advances as well.

I hope you're wrong about ditching CF in a 7D2 but an easy thing to deal with. SD is catching up in speed these days and if they add dual SD rather than single CF that would be a positive.

Those of you interested in a 7D with lower MP, why not just shoot your 7D on M instead of L? Moreover, I woulld be curious to know if the OP has a 7D...

Mine is an incredible camera, capable of amazing things, and the 7D MK II will I am sure have even more glorious megapixels and will retain the APS-C format! (make sure you read this, Canon engineers!)

Those of you interested in a 7D with lower MP, why not just shoot your 7D on M instead of L? Moreover, I woulld be curious to know if the OP has a 7D...

Not the same thing at all. That would only reduce the file size and not increase any ISO performance or DR. I don't really care about file sizes as HDDs and only backup is dirty cheap. But what I do want is better ISO performance, now if you can do that AND increase the MPs then fine. I'd also like the diffraction limit to be higher.

Some people state that they hope that Canon will stop increases in the number of sensels, or even reverse it. I want to know if their claims have a good, sound reasoning behind it, or if it is folklore....

Yes there is good sound reasoning based in physics and mathematics. The more signal you have in a given measurement the higher will be the SNR.

Yes I am aware the topic of larger pixels is highly debated hence my attempt at making a precise statement about the technical measurements rather than "image quality". Yes, under some ideal conditions a higher resolution measurement of a signal and some clever mathematics can result in a signal that is equal and sometimes superior if resolution was a limiting factor. However, those conditions are not present in digital images where there is low signal levels such as shadow areas or in any low-light shooting. NR software can only improve images so much.

Sweetspot... how did he define that? And what did he mean by highest offered resolution. The spatial resolution of a typical P&S scaled up to FF is something like 200MP yet that is not offered, why? The bottom line is that there are trade-offs in optical systems and image sensors.

Fair enough... marketing cannot be trusted on its face. But to say they could save costs by using an archaic process I think is a stretch and marketing itself is a huge part of the reason for offering increasing megapixels... it sells more cameras and perhaps with the current limit of technology they already went a little past the sweetspot at say 24MP APS-C.

Can you further explain your comment about "analog amplification ISO".

Isn't one of the trade offs with CMOS based sensors the fact they require a higher proportion of their surface area to be dedicated to control and readout circuitry than with CCDs? With an ideal sensor (one with which each 'sensel' can gather light from 100% of its area) four smaller 'sensels' would gather exactly the same amount of light as one larger one. At a given level of technology, can we assume that the circuitry required by a CMOS chip, whether it is (for example) 12MP or 24MP is roughly the same? If one accepts this and Meh's value of only 50% of each 'sensel' dedicated to gathering light, then four smaller 'sensels' will not be gathering the same amount of light as one larger 'sensel' because of the space wasted by the associated circuitry.

DISCLAIMER: I present this only as a though experiment, I have no idea about the exact values involved as I have no background in the imaging electronics industry. If someone with greater technical knowledge can provide with correct values, or refute the assumptions made then I would welcome the enlightenment.

But yeah, what I was getting at was the options for the 7D2, regardless of the physics/maths, or what's possible:- Lower MP, but higher low-noise and IQ. Look at the difference between the 50D and 7D (kodak patches about 1/5 down) at ISO 3200 and higher. That was the difference just from gapless microlenses. Now improve that much again (about a stop) and you're at 5Dmk2 noise-levels. Maybe they need to drop to 15MP to do it, to get larger photosites. Keep all the features of the current 7D. That body would be priced about the same as the current 7D. As a current 7D-owner, that's not enough of an upgrade to me.

- Keep 18MP, but with larger photosites. Maybe you get half a stop extra usable ISO (obviously less than if the MP were dropped). Again, with the same features as currently, it's not going to make me upgrade.

- Keep the same size photosites as the current 7D (or near enough so the same ISO looks exactly the same between the new/old), but pack them closer together, into a 24-30MP body. Keep the same featues as current 7D, and the price might go up to halfway between 7D/5D2 prices. I'd consider this upgrade.

- Or a mixture of the last two. Make photosites larger, better (regardless how much) iso-performance, and pack them closer together to 21-24MP. That's probably the most worthy-upgrade from a current 7D, and the most likely to get me interested (although I can't speak for other 7D owners).

- Or the boring upgrade, more MP, say 25-30, but worse iso-performance than the current 7D. Given what happened from 1Ds3 to 1DX, I don't think this is likely. But if it happened, would you buy one? I'm still undecided on that one.

At the moment, the current 7D is a nice upgrade from every other aps-c body (better sensor than 50D, better features than 60/550/600D), unless you like the flip-screen. I don't, maybe you do (but I do know that a flip-screen is harder to waterproof, and more easily breakable). As for other features, I use AFMA and love it. Since I got my speedlite, i've used more than half the shots with the wireless trigger (even though I got a 10m-long cord too, wireless is easier). The FPS is why i got it in the first place. Waterproofing has come in handy, and will in the future moreso.

I don't actually know what else they could add to or change from the current 7D to make it a worthwhile upgrade for current 7D-users, besides the sensor. 45-pt AF would be nice, but i won't pay more than 5% extra for it. It's waterproof "enough". I don't like gripped bodies, my arm gets tired enough (and for those who do like them, buy a BG). The moved DOF-buttons on the 1DX look very nice, but I see that happening to every body in future, it's not exactly a "feature" worth extra money. Ethernet doesn't exactly cream my pants, I might use it if it came on my next body, if not I won't miss it. GPS and WiFi are add-on features for extra money on the 1DX, that's a pretty clear sign that they will not be built into future lower bodies (although they may add the plugs for it).So for the rest of you who actually own a 7D now, what would actually make you buy a newer model, if the sensor is the same? (take into account you'd lose about 15% purchase-price selling old-body and buying new one). And if the sensor is a new one (more than likely), what would you prefer from my options above?

canon rumors FORUM

See now there you go... I made a simple statement of fact that SNR goes up with signal level and that is too simplistic and you want to get into "image quality" which I specifically wanted to avoid because here we go. I call a NR reduction algorithm "clever mathematics" but you want to say it's not "clever mathematics"... whether it's clever or not clever is a matter of opinion I guess but I think it's at least a little bit clever. Can you give me that one?

You're obviously knowledgeable about this topic. Me too. Should we compare "credentials"? Honestly, I don't want to offend you or anyone else. Someone was offended because I got smited... YES! Probably for starting this so I may deserve it

Many of your points are technically sound. Sure, counting photons in 4 bins and adding vs. counting in 1 bin is the same total number of photons. But there will be less signal (fill factor <1) and more shot noise and read noise and therefore lower SNR and DR and you've agreed the accuracy of counting those photons is not as accurate if only as a technical matter. If the SNR is high enough across the entire image then the whole argument is moot but if not you can go ahead and apply a NR algorithm to try and improve the image quality.

I do agree that the more data you have to work with the better NR algorithms will work. The question would be where is the sweetspot above which the additional noise due to smaller pixels outpaces the improved application of the NR algorithm.

And why is the DR in the Nikon D7000 16MP sensor (Sony) so high? If you look up the full-well capacity on sensorgen.info (ooops, that could be another debate) you will see it's very high... probably because they improved the fill factor (i.e. a larger photosite in each pixel, the size of the photosite matters). They also got the noise down in that sensor. Result = large DR of 14. Now look at the Sony A77 (24MP) presumably using at least the same tech as the D7000 sensor and you'll see the full-well is much lower and therefore the DR is only 12.2 so the evidence suggests again that photosite size matters at least to the technical characteristics (again I'm trying to leave "image quality" alone).

Anyway, I apologize to everyone, their families, their friends, and the whole world for starting this.

When the purchasing manager for a news corporation pops their head up and says the 1DX is useless because it only has 18MP and they'll use the 5D3 with 50MP for all of their journalists, then I'll listen. But I doubt that's going to happen.

I agree with your points but not sure your example is the best. Not to quibble too much, but news organizations are all about the reproduction and whether it is in a magazine, a newspaper or on a website, they are going to be throwing away megapixels and resolution even with an 18mp sensor.

But, despite my quibbling, I certainly agree with your major points. The resolution of the 1DX will likely have little or no bearing on future generations of the 5D, 7D or other DSLRs. In fact, I think Canon has thrown us such a curve with both the 1DX and its new Cinema line that it's pretty much impossible to guess what direction they will go next.

It's clear to me that while many say Canon WILL do this or that, or that they MUST offer something because of what a competitor offers, Canon is responding with a big: "Says Who?"

They are demonstrating the agility and innovative thinking that has taken them to the top of their industry. I'm just hoping the ride will be as exciting as it appears.